Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/60

been found eager to take their proper place, as assistants to the ministers of God's word, in their blessed work. What then is the hopeless obstacle? It is the expense. And yet it is not that we want wealth amply sufficient; for herein God has blessed us beyond the example of any former age. It is, that (in the opinion of the objectors) men will not give what is required, though they have it. It is admitted that thousands, yea hundreds of thousands of our countrymen are perishing around us—men united to us by every tie, who speak the same language, are sprung from the same ancestors, many of whom have actually fought with us and for us against our common enemy—who live under the same laws with ourselves, and are liable to punishment if they invade our security or property, whose labour we are daily using for our necessities, our comforts, our luxuries, "without whom our cities could not be inhabited." These men are perishing for ever on every side; we acknowledge that the evil admits of a remedy, that the remedy is in our own power: and shall we indeed think it visionary to hope that it will be applied? The question is (in a few words) whether or not we will be a Christian land—whether we will give up part of our money for the cause of Christ, or will give up Christ for our money. God and Mammon we cannot serve. Long ago we were warned of the impossibility; and now the choice is offered to us whom we will serve;